Bash – Automatically add slash when navigating through symlink

autocompletebashcd-commandsymlink

I use symlinks a lot and pretty much linked my whole home directory into a folder .other or .dotfiles. When I'm im my home directory and try to got into the folder .config/, its actually a symbolic link to .other/.config/.
If .config/ was a normal directory I could just type cd .con and hit tab. Bash would automatically expand it to .config/ (as long as there are no other files/directories starting with .con). Unfortunately bash has this little hurdle, when navigating through symlinks: Bash only expands to .config (not .config/) and I have to hit tab another time to add the / (to got further).
This is just minor, but is there a possibility to get bash to add a slash even after symlink expansion?

Best Answer

Set the mark-symlinked-directories readline option.

The usual way to do this is to edit ~/.inputrc, put

set mark-symlinked-directories on

in there, then start a new bash shell (or press Ctrl+X Ctrl+R to reload your readline settings).

Less commonly, you could also put it straight in your ~/.bashrc like this

bind 'set mark-symlinked-directories on'

Related Solutions

Bash autocompletion for an environment variable holding a directory name

shopt -s direxpand

will help, there will be no space so you can continue typing but it will replace the enviroment variable with its content.

How to list files of which no symlinks exist

If I undersood the question correctly you need files in myfiles which do not have symlinks in images:

#!/bin/bash

OIFS="$IFS"
IFS=$'\n'

files="$(find myfiles/ -type f -name '*.jpg' -or -name '*.cr2')"
for f in $files; do
    list="$(find -L images/ -xtype l -samefile "$f")"
    if [[ "$list" == "" ]]; then
        echo "$f does not have symlink."
    fi
done

IFS="$OIFS"

There is a caveat with this approach if you have file a.jpg in directory myfiles/1 and you have a symlink to that file in directory images/3 or simply in images/ the file will not be reported with missing symlink.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash autocompletion for an environment variable holding a directory name

How to list files of which no symlinks exist

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